James Bond Is The Patron Saint Of White Masculinity

Rumors of a new non-white, non-male 007 shook some fans but stirred the hearts of others

James Bond is sacred to an overly vocal minority of mostly white men. If they could paint the ceilings of their man caves with his holy image, they would.

He’s a fictional character to most but to them, he symbolizes everything a man should be: smart, horny, and powerful. This is why they get upset at the mere suggestion that someone other than a white man steps into the role.

James Bond is not real. He is a dream. James Bond is a mask anyone can wear, even a woman of color.

He’s tough, he can take it. James Bond is more than an icon. He’s a brand, which is like an icon that prints money. The Bond movies have made billions. I don’t understand why so many people are so precious about this. The character’s manly legacy cannot be disputed or erased. He is timeless. Handing the character over to a non-traditional actor would simply create a whole new legacy for a whole new generation, many of whom are not white dudes.

That may never happen. (And it should.) But it came close recently when rumors dropped that the new 007 in the upcoming untitled James Bond movie was British actress Lashana Lynch, who was awesome in the recent blockbuster Captain Marvel.

Daniel Craig will still be playing James Bond, of course. But in the new movie, Craig’s fifth and last go, James Bond is retired, and his iconic code number has been passed on to Lynch’s character. So there you go: she’s not playing James Bond.

But that didn’t matter to diehard fans of author Ian Fleming’s secret agent. When the Lynch news broke, they got very emotional. And I know why they got upset. I don’t have to approve to understand.

I love James Bond. I grew up watching his movies. I wanted a jetpack and a submarine car, and a laser watch. I wanted to travel the world having consequence-free sex with beautiful women. And, most of all, there was the license to kill — permission to throw bad guys from trains, shoot them with harpoon guns, blow up their secret bases hidden inside volcanos. James Bond was my first action star, and you never forget your first.

I was a half-Mexican kid living in Virginia when I first saw a heavily edited Bond on network TV. I was tamale-shaped and insecure. Powerless. To pretend to be James Bond was to pretend to be a human locomotive. And it didn’t matter which Bond I watched: Sean Connery, the smooth streetfighter, or Roger Moore, the winking dandy, or Pierce Bronson, the winking streetfighter, I wanted to be him, all of them, because Bond could do whatever he wanted. He was so much cooler than Zorro.

Bond especially appealed to my whiteness or the part of me that looked like my old man. I wanted to be him but I knew, deep down, that Bond isn’t 50% anything. He is 100% badass, 100% man, 100% white.

Without question, Bond is the patron saint of white masculinity. He protects white people from other white people. Even those villains who aren’t white men have white men on speed dial. In every movie, he is the alpha.

Of course, I would never have considered reinventing Bond in my image when I was younger. Instead, I wished I was 100% white, just like him—a real man.

James Bond, of course, wasn’t just my hero exclusively. I shared the fantasy with others.

My dad was a Bond stan. I probably watched that first Bond film because of him (and, to be honest, my mom, who thought Sean Connery was guapo.)He even read the books, which were a bit more realistic, slightly less dramatic, than the movies. The stakes weren’t always global destruction.

I have a distinct memory of a grade school recess argument with friends, a real Socratic dialogue, about the universal question: “Who would win in a fight, James Bond or Batman?” (Bond. He’s a cheater.)

Long ago, I worked for a knuckle-dragging men’s magazine seemingly based on three editorial principles: beer, bacon, and Bond Girls. A Bond girl is, of course, a beautiful woman who can’t resist the emotional void that is James Bond and who may or may not be dangerous. Given the right circumstances, I could find myself enjoying being a Bond Boy.

The Bond character deserves the criticism he gets, especially the misogyny. I’m not even sure the character hates women. He sees them as no different than the disposable sports cars given to him by gadget-master Q. I don’t know which is worse (they both can be equally bad.)

Bond isn’t even an American fantasy. He’s an English daydream. It amuses me that Americans pine over another country’s folk hero. Bond is very much a deadly, emotionless Winnie the Pooh.

The secret to Bond’s international success is simple: he’s a thug trained to wear a tuxedo.

When the first movie came out in 1963, the British empire was on its deathbed. So it must have been good fun for that exhausted island nation to watch fairy tales about an Englishman so potent he singlehandedly saves the world repeatedly.

The secret to Bond’s international success is simple: he’s a thug trained to wear a tuxedo. A killer who can make small talk at a fancy dinner party. He is, in his way, a metaphor for all of civilization. A barbarian who cleans up nice. A woman can play that, easy.

The upcoming Bond movie, the 25th in the series, promises to offer something different, despite the generations of men who are happy with the same old. Men are sentimental. We hate that we are, but that’s just how it is.

The new Bond movie is being co-written by white-hot Fleabag creator Phoebe Mary Waller-Bridge, who also created the spy show, Killing Eve. It’s great, especially the premise that the smartest intelligence operative in the entirety of the United Kingdom’s vaunted national security apparatus is an Asian-American woman from Sacramento. Now that I write that out, forgive me for chanting USA! USA! USA! out loud in my small one-bedroom apartment.

I hope she, and the whole creative team, can breathe new life into an old character born last century, when men were men and women were accessories. I’d be into a James Bond who looks different. I’m a little disappointed Lashana Lynch isn’t playing James Bond. Or Jane Bond. Either one. I want to see a post-colonialist Deep State do-gooder who isn’t a white man. She’d kill it.

I don’t think I’ve outgrown Bond. He may be the devil, but he’s my devil. I will never stop rewatching the movies, especially Moore’s campy ones. I happen to think Pierce Brosnan’s are underrated. Goldeneye is one of the best. Craig has done excellent work making the beloved murder machine more human, and I am one of the few to like Quantum of Solace. But I don’t know if I need more like those. They’re enough.

I think I’d rather watch a new story about a woman of color in a tux on a mission from MI6, sipping martinis and punching white supremacist masterminds.